I’ve been back in school for a month now, and thankfully last week happened to be a national holiday called Golden Week, so I got the full time off! Golden week actually consists of several holidays all put together such as Greenery Day, the Emperor’s Birthday, and Children’s Day, and many other events went on during the week as well including Pride. I decided that rather than talk about all the typical, big news things, my weekend in Miura would be more fun.
Admiring the ocean waves at night
Located far to the south of Tokyo is the small city of Miura. I went with WIF, the circle that I dance soran-bushi with, for a practice camp retreat. I think the best way to describe how small a community Miura is through the shortage of convenience stores. We were staying at a YMCA and the closest convenience store was a 15 minute walk away. That may not sound like much, but in Tokyo I typically have around 5 or 6 within a 5 minute walk from wherever I am. I even joked with some friends when we had to walk 7 minutes to a convenience store because it was a little far away. However, the beach was really close to where we were staying and practicing, and I had a lot of fun goofing around there. After all, my home state of Utah has an unfortunate lack of oceans, so I’ve got to take advantage of living in an island country!
Here I am with a couple of my friends, Naoya and Pira
Sadly we couldn’t spend all of our time at the beach. We have a lot of work to do in order to be ready for our big performance next month, and so we spent at least 3 hours each day practicing. I was able to finish teaching everyone soran-bushi and set up formations and decide some lighting design aspects, but another group also needs a lot of my time, so my focus during the retreat was split between the two. All in all, we worked hard and played harder! It was a golden way to finish Golden Week!
Go team soran!